Milton and the Manuscript of De Doctrina Christiana

Gordon Campbell, Thomas N. Corns, John K. Hale, and Fiona J. Tweedie

A lively narrative account of the research project that demonstrated the Miltonic provenance of De Doctrina Christiana beyond reasonable doubt

Genuinely multidisciplinary and methodologically innovative: an exemplary demonstration of 'stylometrics' at work

Milton and the Manuscript of De Doctrina Christiana

Gordon Campbell, Thomas N. Corns, John K. Hale, and Fiona J. Tweedie

Description

Debate about the authorship of the manuscript known to us as De Doctrina Christiana has bedeviled Milton studies over recent years. In this book four leading scholars give an account of the research project that demonstrated its Miltonic provenance beyond reasonable doubt. But the authors do much more besides, locating Milton's systematic theology in its broader European context, picking open the stages and processes of its composition, and analyzing its Latinity.

Milton and the Manuscript of De Doctrina Christiana

Gordon Campbell, Thomas N. Corns, John K. Hale, and Fiona J. Tweedie

Table of Contents

PrefaceCitations and AbbreviationsList of Tables and Figures1. The controversy2. The history of the manuscript3. The making of the manuscript4. Stylometric analysis5. The theology of the manuscript6. The Latin style7. ConclusionsBibliographyThe authors

Milton and the Manuscript of De Doctrina Christiana

Gordon Campbell, Thomas N. Corns, John K. Hale, and Fiona J. Tweedie

Author Information

Gordon Campbell is Professor of Renaissance Studies at University of Leicester. His work on Milton includes a revised edition of W.R. Parker's two-volume life of Milton (OUP), the entries on Milton and his circle for the new Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, editions of Milton's Complete Poems and Complete English Poems (Everyman), a compilation of the Miltonic life records in A Milton Chronology (Macmillan), a collaborative edition of the poems of Edward King (Milton's Lycidas), and scores of articles in learned journals. In 2005 he was elected as the Honored Scholar of the Milton Society of America. Thomas Corns is Professor of English and Pro-Vice-Chancellor at the University of Wales, Bangor. His work on Milton includes
The Development of Milton's Prose Style (Clarendon, 1982), Milton's Language (Blackwell, 1990), Uncloistered Virtue (OUP, 1992), Regaining 'Paradise Lost' (Longman, 1994), John Milton: The Prose Works (Twayne, 1998), A Companion to Milton (Blackwell, 2001) and the forthcoming Milton EncyclopediaM (under preparation for Yale University Press), of which he is editor-in-chief. He is secretary to the standing committee of the International Milton Symposium and founder and co-convenor of the British Milton Seminar. His Companion to Milton won the Irene Samuel Prize of the Milton Society of America for books published in 2001, and in 2003 he was elected as the Honored Scholar of the Milton Society of America.

John Hale was until
recently Associate Professor of English at University of Otago. His work on Milton includes Milton's Languages: The Impact of Multilingualism on Style (Cambridge University Press, 1997), an edition and translation of a substantial selection of Milton's Latin Writings (Medieval and Renaissance Text Society, 1999), a book on Milton's Cambridge University education, Milton's Cambridge Latin 1625-1632 (MRTS, 2005), and a collection entitled Milton as Multilingual: Selected Essays, 1982-2004 (Dunedin: English Department of the University of Otago), in which Part Five comprises four new essays on De Doctrina. John Hale has published widely on Milton's Latin, and is at present preparing a transcription and translation of the Miltonic De Doctrina
Christiana manuscript for the Oxford edition of the Complete Works of Milton. Fiona Tweedie is an independent scholar who has taught in the Department of Statistics at University of Glasgow and the Department of Mathematics at University of Edinburgh. She is at present undertaking a degree in theology. Her work on stylometrics has long focussed on Milton's Latin, and she has published a number of seminal articles on author identification.

Milton and the Manuscript of De Doctrina Christiana

Gordon Campbell, Thomas N. Corns, John K. Hale, and Fiona J. Tweedie

Reviews and Awards

Winner of the Milton Society of America's James Holly Hanford Book Award

"We have every reason to be grateful for the attention this book has lavished on its study of the manuscript of Milton's "best and richest possession." As a result of the impressive care and precision, the authors of Milton and the Manuscript have brought to so many aspects of the theological treatise, the authorship question hovering over Milton studies has now been authoritatively resolved." --Milton Quarterly